Centre of Excellence in Paediatric Surgery

EMERGENCY’s latest project and our second Centre of Excellence.

Centre of Excellence in Paediatric Surgery

In February 2017, we began building the Centre of Excellence in Paediatric Surgery in Entebbe, on the banks of Lake Victoria. Uganda is a low-income country with a very young population: 48% of Ugandans are under 15 years old. According to the World Health Organisation, the country is still very far off reaching its millennium goals for reducing infant mortality.

The hospital will provide free treatment and act as a centre of referral, for patients throughout Uganda and children in need of surgery from all over Africa.

The need for such a Centre was also recognised by the African health ministers who make up the African Network of Medical Excellence (ANME), as there is no structure of this kind anywhere in Africa that can offer the same standard of treatment free of charge.

The Entebbe Centre will be the second facility in the network, after the Salam Centre for Cardiac Surgery in Khartoum, Sudan.

The plot of land on which we are building the hospital was donated by the Ugandan government.

The facility is built using rammed earth, a traditional building technique that uses raw earth to make the building resistant to heat and keep temperature and humidity constant inside.

The hospital will rely on 2,600 photovoltaic solar panels to produce the electricity needed for its activities, and thermic solar panels will be used to heat water for the bathrooms.

The Centre of Excellence in Paediatric Surgery was designed pro bono by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in collaboration with the TAMassociati studio and EMERGENCY’s technical department.